Cities with an abundance of anime stores?
 

Sort of a silly thread idea I know, though just out of curiousity which cities would you guys save have alot of anime stores? whether they sell anime/ manga or just strictly anime? Even shops with a large anime selection?

Shops like Best Buy at least where I am, barely have an anime selection at all so they don't really matter imo.

Not including Japan for obvious reasons lol

San Francisco near me actually has a mini mall in Japantown almost entirely devoted to anime/manga shops

So where are the bulk of the anime stores for you guys?

The internet.
/thread

Chiyoda, Tokyo

Oh wait. Not Japan. Um, yeah, the internet.

Although I assume you mean in AMERICA, you know this is an international board, and quite frankly majority of regular posters are from somewhere other than USA.

Only place in USA that I can think of that has more Japanese stuff than SF would be Honolulu, lol.

I have none here in Los Angeles XD

I didn't just mean America, and sorry if it came off like that

I just said not counting Japan, as that's where the anime genre is sold mostly for obvious reasons

Anywhere counts, IMO Toronto has alot of anime shops too

I just meant for those who do still go to anime stores, where are most of the shops at for them :)

I like the Jungle store in Los Angeles a lot.

And I also like the internet since I can get good prices for things like figurines. And Amazon is a godsend for comics and TV shows. But those are not cities, lol...

but yeah if you want a city with a lot of anime stores try Los Angeles, there are a ton. The only problem is that most of them are just warehouses for online stores and they'll self destruct if you try to go to one in person to shop :( Not the best city for Japanese media, but we do have some stuff.

When I lived in Philly, there were a few places where I could pick up both legit and bootleg dvds. They also sold figurines, CDS and other things...but I dunno if they were legit.

Nowadays? I get everything from the internet. Once in awhile though a Target or a WalMart will have an anime dvd I want....

Also, I stream more than anything.

Denver used to have a lot of anime shops...then they all closed down. *sigh*

Wait a second, LA has no shops? Don't you guys have Little Tokyo?

Little Tokyo in Los Angeles - several shops including Kinokinuya bookstore. There's also a new one opening soon that has the green-haired leek-wielding singing mascot as its spokesperson.

San Francisco has the Japantown shopping mall with all sorts of whatnot shops, bookstores, and restaurants.

But I get about 95% of my stuff online. Portland, OR doesn't have too much outside of the manga aisle in B&N, Powell's, or the tiny Kinokinuya outpost in the Uwajimaya grocery store here. There's a handful of "comic stores" but about all they sell is figure collectibles for absurd markups. You go there for Western comics, not for Eastern whatnot.

The internet is great but there is nothing like going in a physical store to lurk around for hours and not buy anything. In the States, if the city is big enough then it will have one or two anime store. I go to Kinokinuya to pick up a light novel but they usually are way expensive. I rather pay for shipping in bundle than pay for that extra cost plus tax. As for out of United States, I been to China and there are usually a minimum of one or two manga/light novel stores with one or two figurine stores even if it is only small city. However, the quality of the product is seriously lacking. It is cheap though! About $2 for a volume of probably counterfeit Chinese translated mangas.

Same thing here in my city. There used to be lots of them during the 90's and we are now down to two, maybe three at most.

I live there now and there are really no anime stores. There used to be a nice one on South Street but that moved away.

To this day I regret not picking up this Escaflowne figure they had there.

I blame Amazon.

And not just anime/manga either, pretty much every niche market.
They're just so damn convinient.

If it's the store that I"m thinking of, they moved out of the city and into the suburbs for awhile. They were next to a Best Buy...I used to buy things from there...until they closed down the shop.

I used to buy Japanese magazines too when Tower Records was still around...they had anime ones and even some fashion ones.

The lack of anime shop is general the same reason there are few hobby stores around since the late 1990s. The Internet. If the store can't compete, it goes away. Much of the time it was used at a walk in preview area rather than make sales.

The internet is definitely a reason, but I always have the feeling that there were too many shops competing for too few customers (that, and the fact that a lot of people wait for anime conventions to buy stuff if they're not buying it online. From what I heard, conventions bring in more cash in a day than a physical store does in a month.)